Farm Ministers of G8, G5 meet on food crisis

Farm ministers from the world's leading industrialised and developing nations gathered Saturday for talks on overcoming a global food crisis that could worsen in these tough economic times.

After the spike in world food prices last year, "there must be stricter rules against speculation... it is unacceptable to be able to get rich by manipulating contracts for basic goods," said Italy's agriculture chief Luca Zaia in a newspaper interview Saturday.

"The first objective must be to increase productivity in developing countries," he told the daily Il Sole 24 Ore.

The meeting of the G8 and G5 agriculture ministers is to run through Monday in Cison di Valmarino, near Treviso in the Veneto region of northeast Italy.

It follows on last year's G8 summit in Japan, where heads of state and government instructed their farm ministers to come up with concrete proposals regarding food security and to find ways to limit food price volatility.

CISON DI VALMARINO, Italy, April 18, 2009 AFP